To Forget
by siiva
Summary: She can't shake the memory of Stefan's choice, even in her dreams. When remembering is too much to take, Elena's only way out is to go to the one person she can't afford to be indebted to. But the question remains - will he help her? Damon/Elena. R&R!
1. BUT I CAN'T SLEEP

_**TO FORGET**_

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
**So, I needed to get this one out. I'm still working on my other story, but this idea has been blocking all my creative attempts with that one. This story is best read while listening to 'Devour' by Marilyn Manson, which it was written to, and I'm begging you guys to give it a listen. It completely sets the mood, and had a lot of influence on the fic itself. Happy reading, and please, tell me what you think!

One month. Four weeks. Thirty-one days. Seven hundred and thirty hours.

This short span of time was how long it had taken Elena to become the embodiment of the phrase 'rock bottom'. The colorful phrase used to describe the moment when an addict hits the final breaking point, gone so far down that the only thing left to do is ask for help had never made so much sense to her as it did that evening, the thirty-first time she'd woken up with tears on her cheeks, Stefan's name on her lips.

The nightmares had started the night he left, and had plagued her ever since. They weren't the stuff of fiction, no monsters or ghouls haunting her in the night; worse, they were vivid recollections of a real life vision. The quiet of the boardinghouse, the long walk down the hall. Katherine's mouth attached to the hollow of Stefan's exposed shoulder, fangs bared, as he fingernails dragged across his back. The most lingering detail was the look on Stefan's face, eyes shut in an expression of pure ecstasy as she drank from him, and in retrospect, the idea that they had both known she was there before she'd seen a thing.

The nightmare always ended prematurely, leaving to the imagination and Elena's cursedly accurate memory the apologetic, shameful look in Stefan's eyes as he confirmed his decision. It was a detail that she had no urge to remember, but one she couldn't forget. Or so she had told herself, every night before that one, in particular, when her mind wandered to its most desperate lengths in hopes of forgetting. There seemed to be no way, the entire scene something Elena was sure would scar her for life, ruining her from the inside out, as long as it played on a loop in the back of her mind. But desperation was a powerful motivator, and before long, a plan was born.

She hadn't spoken to Damon since Stefan left, not daring to encounter him after the way they had left things between them, and unable to meet his eyes with the knowledge of what his brother had done painted across her forehead. After all, there was no reason for them to even acknowledge one another's existence, at that point; she had bluntly told him that she hated him, that he had lost her from his life, forever, he had accused her of playing him as easily as Katherine had, and that had been the end of things, between them. Without Stefan to tie them together, there had been no excuse for her to even attempt to salvage her bond with the eldest Salvatore brother, until it occurred to her that he was the one person who could help her.

It may have been manipulative, it may have been selfish, but as she gathered her strength and made the short trip to the boardinghouse, it was the only option she could see. As much as it pained her to admit that she needed Damon for anything, remembering hurt more, and he could assuage that pain, so easily. That wasif, and only _if_, Damon was still in Mystic Falls, at all. She would soon know.

She didn't bother with ringing the door bell or even knocking, instead stepping in the door she knew would be unlocked. Had she not already been numbed by the situation at hand, she may have been overwhelmed by the boardinghouse itself; it was in pristine condition, absolutely the same as it had been, a month ago. She wasn't sure what she expected to have changed in such a relatively short amount of time, but upon arrival, it was clear that nothing had. Every book was still in place, all the pictures hung exactly as they had before. Even Damon's stock cart of scotch was left, looking fairly untouched.

And that was when it occurred to her that Damon may have moved on from Mystic Falls, as well.

A panic coursed through her, partially acknowledged and largely unnamed. The idea that Damon was gone too frightened her for the obvious reason that she may not be able to seek his assistance in forgetting everything that had happened, but also for reasons she couldn't quite grasp. She hated Damon passionately, last she had checked, and yet, she couldn't stomach the idea of him being gone from her life completely, so soon after Stefan. But she knew Damon, and she had a sneaking suspicion there would have been a grand scale scene, had he decided to make an exit. She wouldn't stumble upon it this way.

She whirled around as a fire flickered to life in the hearth, simultaneously taking her breath away in shock, and helping her to breathe easier. He was still there.

"Damon?" she called out, eyes scanning the room in a fruitless effort to find where he was hiding.

And then, she heard his voice, as smooth and unperturbed as black velvet, in her ear, "Elena."

She turned to face him quickly, finding herself inches from the face of the older Salvatore, for the first time in a full month. She hadn't forgotten his face, but the suddenness of his entrance into her field of vision left her searching for words, mouth slightly slack, as she looked up at him. For the most split second in time, she was aware of a light flush of blood that ran to her cheeks, the quickened pace of her heartbeat, and the fact that she was having grand difficulty mustering the on sight hate she'd kept alive so easily, just weeks before. She had missed him, had missed the idea of him and the life that she had led during a time when they were civil, when things were universally good, when Stefan had been there.

"Breaking and entering?" he finally questioned after they spent a long pause examining one another, a dark brow arching with the statement.

"It was unlocked," she volunteered quietly, eyes casting downward.

"Why are you here?" he asked, a logical question given that they both knew Stefan was no longer present. It crossed her mind that he might think her delusional, assuming that perhaps she thought Stefan had returned, or something along those lines. Or maybe he knew what she was there to ask of him, the dire situation she'd found herself in since his brother's disappearance with Katherine. It was difficult to tell how much of the situation Damon had assessed, and how much was under his control, as usual.

She swallowed her pride, the faintest shine of tears coating her dark brown eyes.

"I... need your help."


	2. YOU'RE A FLOWER WHO'S WITHERING

_**TO FORGET**_

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
**Hopefully you enjoyed the last update, and will do the same with this one. I'm definitely enjoying writing this for you guys, and I always love to hear what you're thinking, so far.

"_I… need your help."_

He regarded her with a wary expression, tensed somehow like a cat, circling a potential attacker. She didn't blame him for the suspicion she saw in his eyes, given the last conversation they'd shared, but her current state left much to be desired in the department of master manipulator. Her eyes were tired, through and through, much like the rest of her. Beneath them, dark circles had settled in for what seemed a permanent stay, no amount of concealer and foundation enough to hide the exhaustion in her face.

"Isn't that convenient?" he asked, his sarcasm faltering as his brow knit in what Elena may have guessed was concern, had it been anyone but Damon. The idea that her desperation was so plainly written on her face was embarrassing, but hiding anything from him was entirely too much of a challenge for the emotionally exhausted girl. He would only find the crack in her defense and exploit it until she caved.

"Please. Don't," she chided him, cringing. "Don't you think I know how stupid I already look?"

"I would say more along the lines of half dead," he offered unhelpfully, still examining her face with those mercilessly keen eyes of his. She felt naked underneath his gaze, as though her insecurities and instabilities of the past month, carefully hidden underneath the pasted on smile that convinced others that she was absolutely fine, were all flooding to the surface.

"Do you want to know what I want, or not?" she asked impatiently, shifting under the awkward weight of his eyes. She was already highly aware of the state her looks were in without his commentary, and the less time they wasted dissecting her appearance, the sooner she would get relief.

"While I'm ever so intrigued to know what's got you suddenly breaking your little vow of silence with me," he began, finally taking a step back from her and making his way to the cart of liquor, where he picked up a half empty bottle. "You've interrupted quality time with me, myself, and I, who fully intend on finishing off this bottle of scotch. Care for a drink?"

Panic rose again. Certainly he couldn't refuse to help her, regardless of how long it had been or how things had been left, before. She knew he cared about her, in the furthest down part of Damon that still cared about anyone or anything; she knew it well enough to use it to her advantage before, and she had to cling to the belief that it still held true, that night. She knew there was good in Damon once, and she could only pray to whatever divine entity might listen that enough of it still existed to see that she needed him.

"This isn't some kind of a joke, Damon," she warned him, growing more flustered as time passed. He didn't seem to take note of her objections, humming quietly to himself as he measured out a precise amount of the liquor into glass.

"Of course not," he replied in all seriousness, lifting his glass to the light. "This is a fifty year old bottle of Chivas Regal Royal Salute. Very expensive, very old blended scotch, and hardly a laughing matter."

A growl of frustration pushed past her lips; they were obviously going to be trapped in this cycle for a while. She took a seat on the couch and buried her face in her hands for a moment, only to be confused as her vision filled with amber liquid when she looked up.

"Only two-hundred and twenty-five bottles in existence," he tempted her in a singsong voice as he pressed the glass into her hand. In reality, it was an unspoken kindness. They both knew she could use the drink, and though she was supposed to be completely on edge in Damon's presence, she was resigned to the fact that he would never hurt her, even in a state of lowered defenses. As vile and horrifying as Damon was, this was the same creature that'd willingly jumped in the path of an arrow for her, who had saved her life, on more than one occasion. At least, that Damon was inside him, somewhere.

"Thank you," she said quietly, looking down into the glass.

"So, tell me — how can I make myself useful to you, this time?" he asked as he reclined on the leather sofa, his expression and tone playing off the comment as though it was intended to do something other than bite through her. Even those sorts of comments were dull and lifeless, his inflection falling just short of what he knew would truly hurt her that evening, her pitiful state more apparent than she had thought.

"I've been having dreams," she said slowly, her eyes strictly avoiding his as she spoke. "Since he left."

His mouth visibly set into a firm line, and he broke the moment's tension by taking a long drink of his scotch. She knew that he didn't want to think about Stefan and Katherine together, any more than she did. He had, after all, loved Katherine to an unbridled and almost psychotic extent, only to find that she had returned to claim his brother, instead. To know that she had passed him up without so much as a second glance, after all of the years of work and devotion gone into freeing her, had to be killing him inside.

"Nightmares, I guess. But they aren't nightmares. They're memories," she continued, following Damon's lead and swallowing a mouthful of the bitter, burning liquid. The taste was unpleasant, but the steeling effect she hoped it would have over her nerves would be worth pushing through. "Of when I saw them."

Even Damon, normally stone faced and unmoved, had to cringe at the idea of what Elena had seen. Had it been him, he would have killed them both, without thought, just as he had acted at the hands of what she did to him, before. He would have killed his own brother and slaughtered the woman he claimed to love in what would have certainly been a blind rage, had he been the one to walk in on the scene Elena had. She had not made the foolish jump to anger that night, knowing that it would have been useless and provoking in the face of two vampires. She had instead settled upon sadness, wordlessly retreating in her tears as Katherine looked on at she and Stefan's goodbye, that damned grin plastered on her lips.

"And you want me to do what about this?" he asked skeptically, raising a brow at her.

"The same thing you did for Jeremy, for Caroline's mother. The same thing you did to Caroline, before," she said, frustrated at having to speak her request out loud, so plainly. "I want you to make me forget."

He looked at her in seriousness, unreadable eyes wide as he regarded her for a long moment. The request she was making of him was more dangerous than she realized, though he could easily see this. It also gave him grounds to assume that some part of her still trusted him, if she was asking him to meddle with the inner workings of her memory and mind. Or maybe she truly was just that desperate, which he supposed should have been obvious if _he_ was her first choice in asking for help.

"You're asking me to compel you," he clarified, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

"I can't even sleep… You're the only one who can help me," she told him genuinely, her eyes pleading with him to believe in the emotion she was showing him. She had cried wolf before, and now, she was living to regret it as she watched him attempt to find an ulterior motive behind her pleas. "Please?"

"I could do it," he pointed out flippantly, tone trivial, "easily. I could make you forget that night, or make you forget him, entirely. I could make you happy that he's gone, if you wish. But the question is… what do _I _get out of helping you?"

And there it was, a typical Damon response. He was worried, still, with what it was he would receive for taking away her pain, always one step ahead of whatever game was being played. Even when there was no underlying game, only raw desperation as there was in Elena, he was still somehow ahead of the curve. But there didn't seem to be anything she could offer him in return for his services, having hit the point where nothing she had to give seemed to be of much value, to her.

"I'll forgive you," she suggested weakly, knowing that she was reaching with that offer. It was unlikely that Damon was still pining for her forgiveness, or that he would believe another offer of redemption. She was unsure whether she could even comply with such a promise, though she would put ever fiber of her being into trying, if it meant she could forget some or all of what haunted her, each night.

"I've heard that somewhere, haven't I?" he asked in mock concentration, furrowing his brow and tapping his chin with his index finger. "Oh, that's right. The _last_ time you needed something from me."

"Please," she begged him, unclasping the vervain locket that hung around her neck. She coiled the silver chain in the palm of her hand and held it out to him, tears beginning to seep from the corners of her tired brown eyes. "I'll do anything, Damon. If you care about me, just do this for me. Please, just _do_ this…"

He accepted the necklace she offered to him and sighed, looking at the dainty thing as he weighed the pros and cons of making the move from arch villain to anti-hero with what he was about to do.

"You'll sleep until you're well rested. You won't dream anymore, tonight," he instructed, pupils dilating and contracting as he looked into her dark brown eyes. It had been so long since he compelled her, and though it gave the majority of him a thrill to be crossing back into the forbidden territory of mind games with Elena, it sent a wave of another emotion — was it guilt? Could he feel that, at all? — through him as well. Anger was there, too, alongside the other emotions he was feeling. Anger at her for being weak, at Stefan for making her that way, and at himself for endorsing it as he was. But there was no part of him that could refuse her in her current condition, more like a ragdoll than the tigress he'd come to know. He may have prolonged her satisfaction, but the truth was, she'd had him at _'I need'_.

"I'm going to sleep until I'm well rested," she told him, her voice dull and slightly automatic. "I won't dream anymore, tonight."

He closed his eyes for a moment and silently lulled her to sleep with his power, feeling and watching the telltale signs take over; her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks as her breathing slowed to a steady rhythm, her frenetic mind morphing slowly into a black, starless night as she fell deeper into sleep, where she would not, in fact, dream for the remainder of her evening.

"And you won't hate me in the morning," he sarcastically added under his breath, merely a hopeful afterthought with no Power and no compelling behind it, just before leaning over to clasp the necklace back onto her neck.


	3. PAIN'S NOT ASHAMED TO REPEAT ISELF

_**TO FORGET**_

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:  
**Sorry for the hiccup in updating. Work and real life began to take a little toll on yours truly. Hopefully I've managed to keep your interest, and this chapter is enough to keep you happy until the next, which I hope is written and posted more quickly than this one. Let me know what you think!

* * *

It was well past noon when Elena finally stirred, regaining consciousness at a crawling pace. It didn't immediately dawn upon her, but her body had simply been obeying Damon's command to sleep until it was fully restored to the balance it'd kept in the days when a full night's sleep had been commonplace to her. It had been a dreamless sleep, something she'd ached for since Stefan's leaving, having been nothing but a night of pure and uncomplicated oblivion. It should have brought a sense of peace to her, but in the moments when she finally found motivation to move and her fingertips grazed over the soft satin of the bed sheets on which she slept, it brought her nothing but panic.

She didn't _own_ any satin sheets; she certainly didn't own any in a midnight black.

It didn't take her long to deduce who they belonged to, given the color, or the light scent of cologne that clung to them. Sitting bolt upright immediately, she gave an unnecessary glance around the room, noting with absolute certainty that she was sleeping comfortably in Damon's bed. Luckily for the rising flush in her cheeks, the vampire occupant of the room was conspicuously absent, allowing her to breathe a little easier for the moment. It was absolutely impossible to remember how it was she came to be asleep in his quarters, and equally impossible how she came to be so peacefully asleep, at all.

She gave her necklace a precursory tug, making sure the chain was still attached to her neck, and remembered something. She had asked Damon to make her forget Stefan, or at the very least, the choice he had made; clearly, he had not done as she asked, she realized, or she wouldn't be recalling it at all. He had compelled her in some way, of that she was sure, but the pain rooted in her memory banks still remained, as present as ever. Immediately, her confusion gave way to fury, and she found herself climbing from the bed without a trace of the ease in waking up that she'd had, moment before.

After a quick moment in the bathroom to right herself in the mirror, she took to the stairs. It may not have been prudent to be so angry with a vampire whom she'd gone to in the night to plead for help, but her life was already enough like a bad teenage novel; she didn't have much fear of pushing that quota. Of course, any fear would have been in vain, Damon making himself scarce as usual in what Elena was left to assume was preparation for another of his dramatic entrances. It took roughly fifteen minutes for her patience to wear completely thin, as she let out a sigh and threw her hands into the air.

"Damon?" she called sharply as she met the foot of the stairs, scanning the lower level of the boardinghouse for him. "I know you're here. I don't have time for this."

"All that sleep and _still_ cranky," he muttered, leaning casually against the wall. "Females."

She narrowed her eyes at him. Elena Gilbert was in no mood for his perpetual stand up show.

"I can't believe you, Damon. I came to you, asking for help, and you just mess with my head," she cut to the chase, anger mingling with sadness in her voice. It was an incredibly vulnerable feeling to have laid bare all of her insecurity and pain for him the night before, only to wake to the realization that he'd turned it into another of his games, nothing but amusement for the evening, after all of her embarrassment. Mentally, she was scolding herself for not knowing any better; trusting Damon with even the least significant of things, let alone the most, was something she'd sworn never to do, time and time again.

He merely scoffed at her. "Don't be dense."

"I shouldn't have come here," she gave in, shaking her head and silently resolving not to further her embarrassment, and turning towards the door. In a flash, he was between her and the doorway.

"You weren't asking for help," he clarified, his voice matching his face in cold seriousness, still dripping with disgust for her, at the moment. "You were making a mistake. You were asking permission to be weak. And I, for one, am not in the business of _helping_ people become cowards."

"I forgot that you're only in the business of helping yourself. That was my first mistake," she spat, her attempt at hiding the fact that she was offended failing miserably. "I won't be that stupid again."

"I certainly hope not," he said, moving closer to her and causing all of Elena's muscles to tense in a mixture of fear and suspicion. "Because we both know you're better than that."

"Better than what? Better than wanting my life to be _normal_ again?" she shouted at him, emotion flooding into her voice in precisely the places she didn't want it to. There was no need to show Damon any more cracks in her armor than he'd already had the chance to exploit.

"Better than giving up who you are over someone as pathetic as my brother."

His eyes were alight with anger, though his voice remained steady, as they stood in a staring competition that neither of them would gladly withdraw from first. She envied his ability to remain almost completely calm physically, as her own hands shook with anger, pinned at her sides. Had she not learned the hard way that a hard slap to Damon's face only served to hurt her hand, she would have given in to the damned near impossible to resist urge to hit him, at that moment. Instead, she simply hardened her gaze.

"So says the same person who's advice is to turn everything off, to 'just stop caring', right? We don't all have the luxury of running from our problems by killing someone or terrorizing everyone around us, Damon," she said, each word falling with a calculated amount of venom behind it.

"See? It's right there. You've got this _rage_, Elena. This _hate_. I can feel it, right here, right now," he explained, a lightning fast and momentarily inappropriate smile coming to his lips as he tilted his head back slightly, almost as though he was relishing the feel of her anger. "And you wanted me to undo it, over Stefan, of all people! Do you have any idea how pathetic you sound?"

She went silent for a moment, though she continued to glare at him. He said the words as though she hadn't considered how pathetic it truly was; she was willing to undo what she had felt for Stefan, what she had learned about herself, her lineage, the world around her, if only it meant she didn't have to remember the pain he had eventually caused her. It was cowardly, most likely the most cowardly thing that Elena Gilbert, Ice Queen and survivalist extraordinaire, had ever contemplated in her life, but there was only so much anyone could be asked to take on. Even she had a point when life had taken the hammer to her heart too many times for the pieces to fit back together correctly, and in her mind, that final straw had come in the form of how Stefan's choice was broadcast to her.

"Screw you, Damon," she muttered as her eyes finally fell away from his. She was completely unable to formulate a coherent response to his accusations past, "You have no idea what this feels like."

A cold, humorless laugh escaped Damon's lips as his face twisted into a mask of ugliness, pure wrath written deep into every one of his features. His hands gripped her upper arms as he stared down at her.

"Carefully consider who it is that you caught St. Stefan in the throes of passion with, Elena," he warned her, eyes more lost and burning than ever she had seen them. "Who it is I spent the past hundred and forty-five years driving myself crazy over. Who looked me in the eyes and told me it was always Stefan, right before you assured me it always would be. Carefully. Consider."

After a long moment of lingering anger, his face returned to indifference and his grip slackened to nothing, still leaving her slightly shaken. It was perhaps the first time she had thought of it in such unselfish terms. Admittedly, it had been hard to see anyone else as the victim in the situation that had caused her so much heartbreak, but the last person she had ever stopped to think of in it all had been Damon, who — despite his protests to the contrary — likely still wished it was him Katherine had invited to run off with her. It had not occurred to her what it had to be doing to Damon to know that Stefan had again been the one Katherine chose, the one Katherine had put effort into luring away, when all along he would have leapt at her first breath to be with her.

"If you know what it's like, why wouldn't you help me forget?" she asked, voice small.

"Because I can't stand the idea that you're as pathetic and weak as to let him break you like this," he said, laying out his qualms with her plan. "And because it wouldn't do any good. I can take away the 'who', but the 'why' is going to be with you, forever. Ask your brother, compulsion isn't a perfect science."

Somehow, she'd managed to convince herself that she'd be different from Jeremy, that compulsion would rid her of everything that ached within her. If the memory of Stefan, or at the very least what she had seen, was gone, she had convinced herself that all of her pain would go with it. It was flawed logic, but it was the logic of a mind that had been desperate enough to beg Damon of all people to help her.

"If you were half as pathetic as that request, I would have done it like _that_," he emphasized, snapping his fingers, in a moment of relatively uncomplicated sincerity from him. "But you aren't. And that isn't the kind of help you need, Elena."

"Who are you to tell me what I need?" she asked, voice free of anger for the moment. "And what am I supposed to do until I find it?"

"You're supposed to be stronger. And you're supposed to trust me."


End file.
